Run the numbers. There is no way to possibly build out enough wind and solar hardware to even come close to replacing what we are using. Not to mention the storage issue that no renewable (rebuildable) advocate ever wants to talk about. The editorial style of the writers gets a little cutesy and long winded but the "Roadmap To Nowhere" lays out some good analysis to show the futility of believing a wind/ solar energy system can ever replace what we have now.
.http://www.roadmaptonowhere.com/wp-cont ... ressed.pdf
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No !,....you need to check your reading comprehension !
What i am saying is, It may be but,
(A) .. there is no scientific proof of its effect ....All we have is theorys and predicdictions
(B). .. Even if there is some effect, on a global scale, no one is able to know what impact , if any, it may have..
But somehow , you guys are convinced that it is inevitable it will be nothing less than total catastrophe !

(A) .. there is no scientific proof of its effect ....All we have is theorys and predicdictions

There is scientific proof that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Fact. If you want proof, refer to the two proofs I posted above. The Youtube one is so simple and visual that even the most fervent anti-science types should be able to understand it.

(B). .. Even if there is some effect, on a global scale, no one is able to know what impact , if any, it may have..

Yep. The old climate change denier three step.

"CO2 isn't affecting the climate!"
"OK even if it is, there's no observable effect!"
"OK even if there is an observable effect, the effects are all good!"

Note that, for deniers, their beliefs change by the minute. The only constant is denial.

But somehow , you guys are convinced that it is inevitable it will be nothing less than total catastrophe !

Nope. No one said that. You are inventing strawmen since you can't argue against the facts.

(A) .. there is no scientific proof of its effect ....All we have is theorys and predicdictions

There is scientific proof that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Fact. If you want proof, refer to the two proofs I posted above. The Youtube one is so simple and visual that even the most fervent anti-science types should be able to understand it...

Bill, there are thousands of YT videos on both sides of the debate, so lets not use YT as some ultimate reference source.

Yep. The old climate change denier three step.
"CO2 isn't affecting the climate!"
"OK even if it is, there's no observable effect!"
"OK even if there is an observable effect, the effects are all good!".....

Its good to see you recognise some of the disputed issues at least.
The only proven " greenhouse" effect of CO2 that i am aware of is its ability to dramatically increasing plant growth when used to raise the CO2 levels in commercial greenhouses

I don't think it's worthwhile doing more than 1 post trying to convince people if or how much co2 can affect the earth climate, there's practically zero chance folks are going to change their mind on that stuff, but we can drill down into more simple hard facts and numbers on energy generation.

I have to say that first youtube is full of baloney, https://youtu.be/sZB1YtQtHjE?t=7m55s
Even at minute 7:55 he claims co2 causes the plant to require more water for the same plant growth, this goes against basic photosynthesis science.
This is basic photosynthesis science because we all should know that plants have to open up their pores on their leaves to absorb co2, but opening up their pores also means water loss if there are no co2 particles to absorb every second they are open, so more co2 means faster absorption of the co2 thus requiring less open pores that cause water loss in the process.
All up I think that guy rants on crap in that video that is just fundamentally wrong, I think hes just making up crap for more views.https://www.seeker.com/earth/climate/pl ... more-watermore efficient at using carbon dioxide to thrive while requiring less water by tightening tiny pores called stomata that permit gas to enter without letting water out

BTW, I read fair amount of that book btw.
That's a great book that one, and I like how its been analyzed by a ton of scientists/engineers.
Even though I can use the most basic math to show how bad capacity factors are in wind/solar and use numbers from official government generation sources most pro-renewable folks just ignore it and tend to just spam 'CF facts' from garbage renewable-energy news sites.http://www.roadmaptonowhere.com/wp-cont ... ressed.pdf

One theory I have is that already with the next Tesla roadster having a 200KWh battery and the Tesla truck rumored to have a multi-MWh battery I can't help but imagine that large cars will sit as high as 400KWh, like the American King Cab family vehicle or cars of that nature.
And if they have two of those large EVs in a family and do a lot of driving then its 800KWh that could be consumed in a day in an extreme event like using both cars and driving home from a road-trip holiday or any long-distance travel.
Then the oldest kid is growing up in the family and he gets his first car at 200KWh car as well. Plenty of families do have 3 cars these days in the latter years of the family when the kids have grown up.

Being the future everything will be low carbon electric based so no gas oven to cook with.. There are lots of double compartment electric ovens now at the 10KW mark, so if its a large family and they cook for 2 hours thats 20KWh gone, the electrically heated house and pool etc. A solar roof + power-wall will only be good at running the home appliances and not vehicles etc. Can a home solar roof pull in 30KWh every day of the year?
All up it won't surprise me that in more situations we could have the 1MWh house-hold per day for our happy low carbon future the way these EVs etc are going.

I liked this bit out of the book because this is what I been imaging too, the true overhead of it having a pure all renewable USA means constant replacing of renewable generation equipment on a scale that is hard to imagine.It also means that 5 years after completion, we'll have to start recycling and replacing the solar panels – all 18 billion square meters' worth.
That's billion with a B.
A 40-year solar refurbishment schedule would mean the recycling and replacement of 1.23 million square meters of worn-out panels, every single day, rain or shine – forever

Because flying takes A LOT of energy (god help us if we need to fight over that), so I imagine the future house-hold with flying cars being something around the order of "the 10MWh per day family".

And that's when I get a bit sad, because it looks like the world is following that PDF renewable energy dream/nightmare, a quite fair cost estimation of $16.5 trillion dollars means very high electricity bills to make it happen or at least get close.
The reason its sad is because its obvious that electricity will cost so much that all of this stuff in our low-carbon future will only be available for the rich. All the rich people will by flying over in flying electric cars and below the poor will just watch on. The irony will be that the poor probably voted for the renewable energy future that gives more to the rich and causes them to miss out of being able to have flying electric cars etc.

I been looking at electricitymap lately and I have realized that they lie by around 10% on a lot of the "Installed Capacity" of Wind-farms or Solar-farms, by under-claiming their size, this makes the generation totals look better than they really are.
I am not surprised about this, it seems to be no matter what area you look at in renewables, someones always lying about the data/performance etc.
So far I have looked at Denmark, South Australia and Germany, all of them have under-claimed installed capacity by about 10%.

Lets look at Denmark first. If you bring up EM and check both sides of the country as their electricity is split between two states East and West you see the total 'Installed Capacity' of wind is 3.81GW + 1.04GW = 4.85GW
But all the articles on the internet claim Denmarks wind capacity is 5475MWhttps://ens.dk/enhttp://www.windpower.org/en/knowledge/s ... arket.html
There are all the typical renewable energy news sites are claiming Denmarks Capacity Factor for wind is over 40% but its pretty easy to look at the official numbers and see its only 30% which for the country in the ultimate wind zone is pretty crappy.Denmark installed wind capacity 5.475GW (5,475MW)
Generated 2017: 14,700 GWh
There are 1,000MWh in 1GWh.
14,700GWh = (14,700,000MWh / 8765.5hours_in_a_year) = 1,677MW average power generation (1.677GW)
So ( 1,677MW / 5,475MW ) x 100 = 30% capacity factor WindThose websites claiming 44% for Denmark are complete utter baloney, theres nothing in the numbers for that at all.

Also note that it seems to be that Denmarks setup of utilizing their wind-turbines is along the lines of "just for fun", because they just constantly burn coal and when the wind does come through they just export it to other countries. But thats not really lowing co2 that way, its just lazy cheating.

South Australia is the same, they have the official AEMO pdfs say 1,810MW installed wind capacity http://anero.id/energy/wind-energy
but on Electricitymap.org its 1,560MW

2018-04-24 (1).png (40.86 KiB) Viewed 534 times

Germany the same, there installed Wind Capacity is 55,900MW while electricity map claims only 49,600MW
This PDF below is great, its all official 2017 numbers for Germany on just about everything to do with electricity in Germany.https://www.erneuerbare-energien.de/EE/ ... nFile&v=17

What first made me suspicious was the fact that everytime I look at Germany its such a wind-less country compared to the high wind-zone that England and Denmark enjoy having their land so deep out in the sea where the wind builds up speed.
Anywhere there is a lot of land the wind just dies away typically. Even Italy doesn't get much wind because its surround sea area isn't big enough compared to the huge bodies of land around it.
Here is a typical sight when looking at the wind on electricitymap. Red arrows, lots of wind, blue very little wind.
This is why I started to see Wind much like Solar or Hydro electricity, you can't actually build anywhere, the capacity factor will vary a lot.

2018-04-24 (2).jpg (144.92 KiB) Viewed 534 times

Before I did the calculations and claimed Germany has wind capacity factor of 23%, even though I felt that was dubiously high.
I googled around wondering what news sites etc claim and Wikipedia's page on Germany wind is far more honest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_powe ... Statistics and they put the Capacity Factor at 21.30% for 2017.
It was 17.95% for 2016!

Germany installed wind capacity for 2016: 49,534MW (Which is what EM claim it is for 2018, so to me they are deliberately 1 year behind to make the capacity factor look better then it really is on live generation stats)
Germany 2016 generation 77,412GWh
(77,412,000MWh / 8765.5hours_in_a_year) = 8831MW average power generation (8.831GW)
So ( 8,831MW / 49,534MW ) x 100 = 17.8% Capacity Factor Wind

I feel a lot better now, those old numbers on CF were really bugging me as they just didn't feel right.

So looking at the last 8 years of Wikipedias page on Germanys Wind Capacity factor we can do the math on average capacity factor number over the years.
(16.04%+ 19.44%+ 18.68%+ 17.75%+ 17.07%+ 20.43%+ 17.95%+ 21.30%) / 8 = 18.58%
So Germanys long term average wind capacity factor is 18.58%

I just came arcoss this capacity factor for Wind and Solar for Europe which really seems quite accurate.

DbmrtFkV0AYc7nd.jpg (77.39 KiB) Viewed 295 times

Attachments

Last edited by TheBeastie on Apr 25, 2018 3:47 am, edited 5 times in total.

No !,....you need to check your reading comprehension !
What i am saying is, It may be but,
(A) .. there is no scientific proof of its effect ....All we have is theorys and predicdictions
(B). .. Even if there is some effect, on a global scale, no one is able to know what impact , if any, it may have..
But somehow , you guys are convinced that it is inevitable it will be nothing less than total catastrophe !

Wow. Just wow. The ignorance is strong with this one. So strong it has to be willful. Now he's trying to say that calculations are theories?

You dont accept there is a difference between a calculation and scientific proof ?

Wow, your ignorance is mind boggling. Firstly, there sure the damn hell is scientific proof of the effect of CO2 on adsorption of just about any wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum. For Pete's sake, all you need to do if fill a tube with a gas, shine a light through at a specific wavelength and measure how much makes it through to the other end. These experiments were done as early as the 1820's and the US military relied on such experiments to develop heat seeking missile technology. The science and physics is well established and well understood. Secondly, you don't seem to even know what a theory is. Perhaps you should look it up and come back. A calculation is just that--a calculation. 2+2=4 is not a theory. As I mentioned before, the Laws of Thermodynamics are also not theories. And using the Laws of Thermodynamics with the KNOWN light absorption properties of CO2, one can CALCULATE the energy absorbed and the resulting change in temperature. None of that is a theory. Not that a theory is a bad thing. Theories stem from hypotheses that have been well validated by observations and data and have come to be generally accepted by science. You seem to be posing a hypothesis that one can add endless amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere and not have a warming effect. What is the physical basis for your hypothesis and what data and observations can you offer to validate it so that it may eventually graduate to being a theory?

Then I think in about 25 years time we will have a fair amount of electric flying cars.
Because flying takes A LOT of energy (god help us if we need to fight over that), so I imagine the future house-hold with flying cars being something around the order of "the 10MWh per day family".

Maybe. Flying cars have been predicted for over 100 years, so I won't hold my breath. But even if they do come to pass:

And that's when I get a bit sad, because it looks like the world is following that PDF renewable energy dream/nightmare, a quite fair cost estimation of $16.5 trillion dollars means very high electricity bills to make it happen or at least get close.
The reason its sad is because its obvious that electricity will cost so much that all of this stuff in our low-carbon future will only be available for the rich. All the rich people will by flying over in flying electric cars and below the poor will just watch on. The irony will be that the poor probably voted for the renewable energy future that gives more to the rich and causes them to miss out of being able to have flying electric cars etc.

I am sad because it seems like you can't figure out a way to charge a large battery (such as the one you'd find in a 'flying car' or even an EV) with a cheap solar array.

BTW today the rich drive around in cars and the poor watch them. This is indeed sad - but fortunately is changing.

I'll post this again. A very thorough and well explained presentation of the various forcings of global temp. In previous deglaciations CO2 and Methane were usually a lagging positive feedback to solar/ orbital triggers. Although gas emission from long duration massive flood basalt flows has also triggered some warming events after initial aerosol cooling. This time anthropogenic carbon emissions are the trigger. Fortunately the Sun is entering a Grand Minimum for the next 50 years so we will get a brief reprieve.
.https://youtu.be/52KLGqDSAjo
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I'll post this again. A very thorough and well explained presentation of the various forcings of global temp. In previous deglaciations CO2 and Methane were usually a lagging positive feedback to solar/ orbital triggers. Although gas emission from long duration massive flood basalt flows has also triggered some warming events after initial aerosol cooling. This time anthropogenic carbon emissions are the trigger. Fortunately the Sun is entering a Grand Minimum for the next 50 years so we will get a brief reprieve.
.https://youtu.be/52KLGqDSAjo
.

Potholer sounds very authoritive and knowledgeable , putting up what appears to be an unbiased analysis of facts.... but conveniently skips afew details.??
He ackknowledges that the ice core records of CO2/Temp have repeated correlation but with a time lag....CO2 increase lagging Temp rise by 800 yrs or so, ..but omits to point out that it also shows repeated events of temperature decreasing whilst CO2 remains at elevated levels. That would imply that CO 2 increases are the result of temperature increase rather than the cause. The Cause of Temperature increase being some other mechanism (Sun, etc?)
How then does a rational mind suddenly conclude ...(using a magician like distraction of a graphic !,) .. That this time , completely contrary to the evidence he just confirmed, that CO2 is the "trigger" to initiate a Temperature increase ?... That is not scientific deduction , its just a theory again.
More recent analysis of current atmospheric data also shows that there is still a measurable "lag" between temp rise and a corresponding CO2 increase, though only by 10-12 months
An alternate view..https://youtu.be/2ROw_cDKwc0

There are no legitimate objections you can make - the science is well settled. Everything has been accounted for and the variables defined to a good degree of accuracy. Real-world data has repeatedly been shown to match predictions/models.

Whether you realise it or not, you are just repeating already-debunked theories/objections from ignorant denialists.

He ackknowledges that the ice core records of CO2/Temp have repeated correlation but with a time lag....CO2 increase lagging Temp rise by 800 yrs or so, ..but omits to point out that it also shows repeated events of temperature decreasing whilst CO2 remains at elevated levels.

Of course. Many things affect climate, not just CO2.

How then does a rational mind suddenly conclude ...(using a magician like distraction of a graphic !,) .. That this time , completely contrary to the evidence he just confirmed, that CO2 is the "trigger" to initiate a Temperature increase ?

Because we know what sort of warming CO2 causes, we have increased the concentration of CO2, and we are seeing the warming you'd expect to see if the primary cause of warming was anthropogenic greenhouse gases (of which CO2 is currently the most significant.)

There is no longer any reasonable doubt that increases in greenhouse gases are warming the planet. (At least, in the scientific world. People whose income depends on denying it will continue to do so, of course.)

CO2 and CH4 increases lagging temperature increase in the historical record is already accepted and we have yet to see the worst of the positive feedbacks kick in from what we are now doing. He spends a great deal of mathematical analysis to discredit the ice core CO2 data by proving that for high frequency periods of months, the ice core record will compress the resolution so as to yield error of as much as 15X. Which is true again for those short periods where the phase of the measurements were distorted.. But he then implies that the same amounts of error could be found in the 1,000 year time scales which it wouldn't.
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CO2 does have an atmospheric greenhouse effect. He states as 1% of all other forcings. Which sounds insignificant. But if everything else stays the same, and you double the CO2, it becomes 2% and the earth will get warmer everything else being equal. And then warmer still when the natural CH4 and CO2 emission increase. We have lost some of our negative feedback mechanism from deforestation.
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We are concerned with a 4C rise which is from 290kelvin to 294kelvin. A very small change in absolute temp can hurt us bad. For 1,000 years.

You do not know, ...you only have a "Theory" that CO2 is a "cause".....whilst the data fron the historical evidence shows the oposite..that raised CO2 levels are a "EFFECT" resulting from increasing temperature.
There is no proof that the current level of CO2 is causing change in global temperatures.
Any change in temperature could equally be the result of many other influences.

....There is no longer any reasonable doubt that increases in greenhouse gases are warming the planet. (At least, in the scientific world. People whose income depends on denying it will continue to do so, of course.)

.....and people whose income and financial situation will benifit, have a vested interest in promoting the AGW theory.
And some who have nothing to gain either way with continue to question the pseudo science.

There is no proof that the current level of CO2 is causing change in global temperatures.

Of course there is no "proof" if you refuse to look at any of the available information.

Anyway, back in reality, my domestic gas & electricity supply is up for renewal so I thought I'd see if there are any suppliers out there offering 100% renewable electricity and if so how much extra it would cost (I was willing to pay a bit more). It turns out there are several and they are surprisingly competitive.

I'll be going with a company called "Bulb" who supply 100% renewable electricity and 10% bio-gas (methane from pig slurry).

Their price is 5% cheaper than my current supplier (who supply 10% RE electricity and 0% RE gas) and still cheaper than the cheapest price I found on comparison sites for non-green suppliers.

Maybe the great "German RE experiment" is having some sensible results...
They seem to have realised the true financial impact of solar.
New Investment and development of solar installations has all but stopped since subsidies and Feed in Rate incentives have been reduced

In 2012 over 7000 megawatts of new solar capacity were added....
.......But in 2012 the boom ended abruptly as new laws on feed-in rates were enacted in order to keep the solar energy supply from going out of control. In 2017, only 600 megawatts of new capacity were expected to be added. That’s a 90% drop!

The earth would be 20°c cooler on average if we remove c02 from the atmosphere the air becomes extremely dry, It's the increased rain activity and storm energy we see today as water evaporate's from the sea and forms a rain cloud the upper and lower areas of the cloud become oppositely charged forming lightning before its precipitates back to the ground, this process becomes more often as the humidity increases that is partially drove by the co2 so our weather pattern's can throw more violence at us as theres more energy in the storm systems we see.

Lightning itself creates greenhouse gases nitrogen oxides that help to slow the affect of the carbons warming, as you can see we have only scratched the surface of all the interactions within the planet and it gets deep that's why no one can say for sure as there's so many process interlocked than can bring an ice age or a warming period outside of the sun's influences and people can choose not to believe that we are part of the system ourself's but our population increase and use of fossil fuels means the atmosphere has changed we did put a hole in the ozone with cfc and our early nuclear testing left toxic parts of the plant that still cause cancers in the rain today it's in sheer scale of numbers that we continue to advance but along side it we also destroy many a thing but chose not to see it as if we have advanced ourself's as a species when we are just becoming more careless for profit a money driven planet does not benifit anyone but the top 5% if you think there's order then think again.

Last edited by Ianhill on Apr 27, 2018 11:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

I've done this before myself. They hook you with a cheap price at the beginning and then sneak in increases over the coming years.

That is a risk as it is a variable-rate, rather than fixed-rate contract, but that is true of the non-green suppliers as well. I did a little research/homework on them and found generally favourable reviews and also that they actually decreased their prices twice last year, while all the main (non-green) suppliers increased them (including my current supplier).

It's worth a punt to me. I was prepared to pay ~20% extra for RE electricity anyway.

There is another, new-fangled supplier with an app-based, subscription-style business model who charges a £10 (no standing charge) monthly fee to cover running costs and profit and then you get RE electricity and carbon-offset gas at the wholesale price. Even though it favours heavy users it still worked out cheaper than me, but the low-overhead, AI-based customer "support" put me off.

Both these suppliers and others seem to have popped up in the last 1-3 years so it's good to see new options emerging and they seem to be rapidly growing in popularity. It seems people do care a bit, as long as it doesn't cost too much

Found the link I was looking for! Originally posted by Jimw1960, it's an excellently concise illustration of all the influences on the observed change in global temperature over the industrial period. It's a great view for anyone claiming the cause is something other than CO2 and takes literally a minute:

You do not know, ...you only have a "Theory" that CO2 is a "cause".....

Nope. We have proof. Scientific, repeatable proof. To wit:

1) CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Increasing concentrations of CO2 increase heat retained. This can be proven in a high school physics lab.
2) We are increasing the concentrations of CO2 in our own atmosphere. Again, provable via simple chemistry and math; tons of coal/oil burned compared to the volume of the atmosphere.
3) Temperatures are increasing according to the predictions based on increases in greenhouse gases.

whilst the data fron the historical evidence shows the oposite..

No, they don't.

There is no proof that the current level of CO2 is causing change in global temperatures.
Any change in temperature could equally be the result of many other influences.

You'd make a great lawyer.

"Your honor, the evidence will show that the defendant poisoned Mr. Jones by putting polonium in his coffee. The medical examiner found fatal amounts of polonium in his blood, the defendant stood to gain significantly through his death, and five witnesses saw the defendant pouring the polonium into his coffee."

HH: "But there's NO PROOF that that polonium actually killed him! He might have just had a heart attack right before the poison took effect. Or he might have been shot. Or someone might have been about to shoot him, and that scared him to death. Or cancer. OK so they didn't find any cancer, but you know doctors. It could be ANYTHING!"

.....and people whose income and financial situation will benifit, have a vested interest in promoting the AGW theory.

The image of rich grad students pushing an unfounded theory to keep the money pouring in, while the poor Exxon executives are powerless to stop them is a funny one indeed. I bet you even believe it.

The fact remains that greenhouse gases in our atmosphere cause more retained heat. We are increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The temperature has increased as predicted. And no matter how much fear, uncertainty and doubt you sow, and no matter how politically correct you get to try to align with the new US administration, you cannot change those basic facts.

The reason deniers will fail in the long run is not due to rhetoric, or even scientific studies. They will fail because people in Alaska will see their towns eroding away because the pack ice is gone. They will fail because farmers will see their crops die off due to higher temperatures and droughts. They will fail because Indians will see their coastal cities flood. And at that point, the "the temperature isn't increasing! It's all lies! And even if it's happening, it's not our fault! And if it is, the changes will all be good!" rhetoric will fall flat.